People always say that weddings are all about the bride. Well, Joy Rose’s wedding really was. In fact, the bride was the only thing at her wedding. Rose married herself earlier this year on a cliff in Barbados overlooking the ocean. And no white dress for this bride. Her “gown” was a bathing suit. The reception consisted of a party back in her kitchen after the “ceremony.”

Rose is a writer and the mama behind mamapalooza.com and the band Housewives on Prozac (housewivesonprozac.com).

Speaking to me over the phone from her home in New York, Rose tells me that when her marriage ended after 18 years and four children, she had to figure out how to survive and rediscover her single self.

Her single self then found her quickly not so single when she reconnected with her junior high school boyfriend, who had just ended his 22-year marriage. He lived three hours away, but they managed to enjoy what she describes as a beautiful four-year long-distance relationship. However, with kids in high school making it impossible for him to move to her and her unwilling to move and once again give up her life for a man, they broke up.

Most relationship and self-help books tell you, you have to love yourself before you can love someone else. Rose just took it literally. “I figured that rather than worrying about marrying someone else, I better be my own perfect person and marry myself,” Rose tells me.

This past February, during a solo vacation to the Barbados, she did. The “ceremony” took place at The Crane, a rock arch on a cliff where couples often come to do the nuptial thing. Rose stepped through the arch, leaned out over the crashing waves in her bathing suit and said, “I do.”

She’s not the first. In 2003, artist Jennifer Hoes married herself in Harlem, Holland complete with white dress and family and friends as witnesses. And, in 2005, at age 26, New York psychologist and performance artist Kevin Nadal (wedding.kevinnadal.com) also married himself.

According to an article on salon.com, Nadal announced the wedding in a press release that read: “Friends and family are encouraged to fly into New York, in the same way that I am encouraged to fly to California or Michigan and Hawaii for their weddings.... But we won’t be celebrating the love of two people; we will only be celebrating the love that one person has for himself, as well as the love that he has for his friends and family.... It’s not just a party. It’s my ‘special day.’ It’s the day that a boy has been dreaming of all of his life.”

When a salon.com writer suggested to Nadal that traditional marriage is about making a public commitment to “pledge responsibility, fidelity and financial support to another human being,” Nadal countered that: “What about commitment to being career-oriented? Or to finding love and not settling for anything else? Or to being alone and being satisfied? Who’s setting these norms of what’s considered commitment and what’s considered an accomplishment?” It was a point he felt worth spending $6,000 to make.

Rose says her marriage is going swimmingly. There’s the usal bickering (“The same issues that would come up with a guy, come up with myself”) but she is firmly committed to her own well-being and self-empowerment.

And the sex? “Oh yeah, baby,” is all she says.

However, at the end of our conversation, Rose confessed that eight months after marrying herself, she met a wonderful man. Though she has no plans to marry him, she’s had to turn her marriage into an open relationship. So far, so good.

And if Nadal meets someone he decides he wants to marry, he says he’d simply get married again. After all, people are also forced to go to friends’ and families’ second weddings.

SexTV BREAKS 100 Years of Taboos

Bump & Grind: The Making of a Burlesque Diva airs Saturday, June 21 at 9 p.m., ET on SexTV: The Channel. Featuring commentary by Margaret Cho, Dita Von Teese and burlesque legend Dixie Evans, Bump & Grind is a one-hour documentary that examines the golden age and revival of the art form known as burlesque. The doc follows five serious female burlesque performers from their hometowns, to the neon-lit Vegas strip, for the Miss Exotic World Pageant (considered the Academy Awards of burlesque). For more info, visit www.sextelevision.net.